The Girls He Adored

33

“Bill, I'm going to ask you a series of questions,” said Max to the elderly man tied to a wooden chair in the kitchen area of a double-wide trailer located at the top of a steep driveway in the Big Sur mountains. He and Irene had driven the back roads for nearly an hour looking for just the right place-an isolated driveway with only one mailbox. “Your life depends upon your answering truthfully. Isn't that right, honey?”

Irene was standing in the doorway of the trailer, watching the driveway, as she'd been ordered to do. She turned around, saw the man looking at her imploringly over his gag.

“I believe it is,” she said. Not strictly true-after her success at talking him into freeing Barbara, Irene was inclined to the opinion that Max, though extremely disturbed, was not the homicidal alter. She almost had to believe that. Her nerves were frayed to the breaking point, but she understood instinctively that if she let herself give in to the fear, even for an instant, she would be lost. It was an emotional balancing act, and if she fell, there would be no climbing back onto the high wire.

“Okay, here's your first question, Bill,” said Max. “Are you expecting any visitors?” He'd parked the Volvo under a lean-to garage with a corrugated green plastic roof and positioned Bill's own battered white Dodge Tradesman van at the top of the driveway, pointing down the hill, ready to roll.

Bill shook his head.

“Anybody else live here?”

Shake.

“Anybody else ever lived here?”

Another shake.

“That's a lie, Billy-boy. You never hung those curtains.”

Irene glanced over her shoulder, saw that the curtains were white, flounced, and feminine, with little blue windmills. Observant fellow, that Max.

“Honey, you're supposed to be watching the driveway.”

She turned around again quickly. By cooperating with Max, Irene hoped to help him lower his stress level and maintain his dominance over the other personalities.

“Now, Bill, I'm goin' to give you a second chance,” Max said softly, almost gently. “See, we just robbed us a bank up in Carmel. We're not interested in doing you any harm-we only want to get out of here. But the situation is heatin' up pretty fast. What I want from you is first, the truth, and second, your van. What I'll do for you in return is, I'll leave the keys in the Volvo-it's a better'n even trade, and you'll get the van back anyway once we're done with it. Now, do we have a deal?”

Bill nodded.

“Swell. Who hung the curtains?”

“My wife-she died last year. Cancer.”

“Well, I'm sorry to hear that, Bill. Were the two of you married long?”

“Thirty years.”

“Man, but life can be cruel.” Max tsk-tsked. “Tell ya what I'm gonna do. I'm just gonna leave you tied up here for a couple hours while we borrow your van. If you can get to the phone before then, more power to you-if not, we'll give somebody a call to come get you loose. Any family around here? Any close neighbors?”

Bill shook his head. His daughter lived nearby-she was working the dinner shift at a restaurant down by the highway-but he'd be damned if he was going to give her name to these two characters.

“How about if I call some local business then? I'd just as soon not phone the police, you know how it is.”

“Nepenthe-call Nepenthe. The restaurant-they'll be open.”

“Nepenthe it is. Let's go, honey.”

Max followed Irene out of the trailer and, in a bit of excessive chivalry, helped her up onto the passenger seat of the van. Then he slapped his forehead. “I almost forgot, we'll need clothes and supplies. Be right back.”

He cuffed her left wrist to the steering wheel. Irene didn't mind as much as she thought she would. In a way it was a relief, not having to decide whether or not to make a run for it. She watched through the rearview mirror as he entered the trailer, still wearing that ridiculous pink suit, and emerged a few minutes later dressed in jeans and a blue flannel shirt, wearing a black knit watchcap over his blond hair and carrying a cardboard box, which he tossed in the back of the van.

“There's some clothes in there.” He climbed up into the driver's seat and uncuffed Irene. “They look like they might fit you, but you need to change even if they don't. There's also a wig for you- Mrs. Bill must have lost her hair before she died.”

A dead woman's wig-Irene could feel her scalp contracting involuntarily. “Do I have to?”

“You have to do everything I tell you. That's how this works.”

As the van bumped down the long steep driveway, Irene crawled into the back and went through the contents of the cardboard box. Food: peanut butter, jelly, bologna, white bread, apple juice. Clothes: cranberry-colored polyester slacks; polyester blouse, mauve, with plastic toggle buttons. Mrs. Bill must have been quite a pistol in her day.

Irene sat on the ribbed steel floor of the van and pulled the blouse and slacks on over her tank top and shorts, then removed the wig from the box. It was Bozo red. She clenched her jaws, fought against an urge to vomit, tasted bile as she slipped the wig on and tucked her hair under it all around.

“Irene?”

“Yes, Max?”

“There's a carton of Camels in that box somewhere. Bring me a pack, would you?”

His tone was casual, conversational. Irene mirrored it. “Lucky for you he smokes your brand. I hope you left him a pack.”

Silence. A long silence. Irene realized she might have overstepped her bounds, been too flip. Squatting in the back of the van, she felt a sudden wave of dizziness, and realized she was holding her breath.

“No, no, I didn't,” Max said eventually; to Irene's relief, he sounded more amused than upset. “It wasn't necessary-I happen to know that the old man just quit smoking.”